Photography: Shooting Food

I’m a complete Photography noob, but I’ve inherited a Nikon D70 DSLR from dad. So far, I’ve noticed that 98% of the time, my shots are horrible. It wasn’t until recently when I started playing around with it more that I started to realize what I can do. I’ve been wanting to help Samantha out with her blog, but I haven’t been able to take good shots without the pictures coming out too dark, too blurry, or different shades of blue or red. So, I’ve been systematically eliminating these problems.

So far, in terms of the images being too dark. I’ve tried to slow the shutter to capture more visible light. What that means is that I’m required to stay perfectly still for a very long time, which is near impossible unless I had a tripod. If I don’t have a tripod, that’ll make all my images extremely blurry.

So, under low light conditions and with no tripod, what can you do? Recently, I’ve discovered (or finally tried) adjusting the ISO. What I have learned is that the higher the ISO, the better your shots will be in the dark. However, you start to see some grain in your photos, which is bad. So, the assignment here is figuring out the balance between Shutter, Aperture, and ISO. I’m using a manual 50mm f/1.4, so I’m setting the Aperture to f/1.4, Shutter 50, and ISO I’m still messing around with.

In order to adjust the color, I found that changing the WB (White Balance, Duh!) definitely helped. There are some settings on the D70 for low light conditions, different light bulbs, etc.

Well, I’m practicing right now in my room, but let’s see if I can make this work later.